HDR Darkroom!

The search continues for greener HDR pastures. This week I downloaded the free trial for HDR Darkroom by Everimaging LTD. Of the many HDR programs that claim to create great HDR images at lightening speed, I would have to throw my hat off to HDR Darkroom. I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to express style HDR image programs because many of them fail in the quality category. This is not true for HDR Darkroom. I ran a test on some of my favorite images to see just how HDR Darkroom could hold up.

The Interface:

The Good:

Ease of operation, the whole experience just seemed really easy.

The interface was well laid out, and the effects of the slider bars ran extremely fast even at full size.

The 3 categories for HDR really do a great job of getting you started, before post processing in an outside agency like Photoshop.

Everimaging LTD made great use of the tonemapping process with very little slider bars.

It’s only 79.00, and these guys offer a student version for 39.99!

The Bad:

While it was very easy to use and the slider bars offered great HDR images, they all seemed to be the same, I couldn’t quite get any other HDR styles out of the slider bars.

Once you have created an HDR image the program does not prompt you to tonemap it. While this may seem nit picky, there are some beginners out there who would not know to tonemap there newly made HDR image.

The HDR image looked much better in the tonemapping interface than it did after HDR Darkroom tonemapped it.

The Bottom Line:

I would use this program again and again as it is a simple process for making pretty good HDR images. At least they are a great starting point for Photoshop post processing. Good job Everimaging LTD!